


Learning to Live

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [23]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Letters, Loss, M/M, Pining, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 18:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14677191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Who’s the hero of this story?





	Learning to Live

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: There’s no such thing as heroes and villains. The line begins to cross somewhere.  
> Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

Who’s the hero of this story?

Is it the man who punched me in the chest, who cracked my crest, who sent me sailing through the sky towards the promise of a river with blood in my mouth, in my teeth?

Or is it the man, the very same, who hooked his hand through my collar and dragged me away from drowning? Who left me staring blank-eyed at the sun and never said he recognized me? Never said my name.

Most people would call him the villain. Even though he saved my life.

Yes, they’d say. But he took dozens, hundreds, with his own hand. And the one that they gave him, a slick metal whir, a silver blur, the last thing his victims saw, probably: the unexpected glint of his arm rising out of the everyday to make sure they never again enjoyed the mundane. Worse, how many thousands had died because of him, if not by him? Because he destroyed this dream of revolution or fomented a false one; because he killed this great woman, this good man, and made room for a craven one in their place?

He’s history’s ultimate antagonist, some people would say. Have said.

But then these same people would look at me and call me a hero, the living embodiment of the word. I’ve killed people, too, with my shield or my hands or a gun. I had to. It’s the reason I was created. Except most of the people who’ve died because of me or my actions were villains, the easy to spot kind: Nazis, would-be dictators, those who thrive on oppression and fear, and I don’t regret my part in their deaths, not for an instant, but I’m a killer, none the same. I’ve learned to live with that.

Bucky’s never had that chance.

****  
 

I write him letters that I never send. I pour over the surreptitious holos that T’Challa sends of a long-haired man I hardly know and I can see the peace in him, the ease. Even with that hair and the beard, it’s still the closest thing to my Buck that I’ve seen in 75 years, the man I see in those fields, elbow-deep in hard work, skin smoothed over by the sun, a smile that’s not aimed at anybody, not pitched, one that’s for him alone.

He smiles a lot, this man. In every flickering image I’ve seen. I’m glad, way down in my gut glad, but there’s the twist of a knife there, too. Why hasn’t he called for me? Why doesn’t he want me there, by his side, sprawled in the grass while the goats dance through the fields? The smell of flowers in the air, the smell of fresh cut hay, the sun in our hair as we lay side by side, together again, but not touching.

I don’t imagine touching him. I can’t. It’s like a clamp around my heart, the drive of metal into every chamber, blood leeching, screeching to bloody still halt.

I write that in the letters I don’t send, sometimes, when I’m tired or tipsy or sad, tears gathered furious at the corners of my eyes and my hand shaking sideways around my pen. I write: _If I think about touching you then everything seems lost. All my hope ground into ash. When you were gone, when I thought you were, I used to dream about the tips of your fingers, your breastbone, the soft sunken place behind your ear where I whispered all my best secrets, the place that used to repel lies. Never could lie to you when you were naked, curled up close beside me. You used to throw your head back when I kissed you there, even if you were dead-all asleep; throw you head back and feed me all of that skin, the long pretty slide of your neck. You used to make room for me, is what I mean, Buck. Why can’t you do that now?_


End file.
